Picture it, Carthage Bulldog Stadium, October 9,2015....
In football, we were blowing through opponents and had our eyes on an undefeated season and a district championship. I always kept that "we are better than them" attitude during practice and during pregame. Mainly because we had so much talent on our team this year, I literally thought we could beat anybody put in front of us. It would soon prove to be parallel to our basketball team (which just won district two weeks ago). So, back to football, we roll in to Carthage on a pretty good high. It is our first official district game, we had already faced a district opponent in a non-district game (Chapel Hill) and we felt good about our chances against them. If you don't know, Henderson and Carthage have a storied past. Being a graduate of Henderson, I routinely remind our kids of just how much angst we have for Carthage. Of course, it is a friendly rivalry, off the field. Something happens when the scoreboard turns on and the game starts. So, another coach and myself had already arrived and were coaching the 7th Grade "B" team when our "A" teams started filing into the stands. The format of the games is usually, 7th Grade "B", 8th Grade "B", 7th Grade "A", and 8th Grade "A". usually. So, here we are, 7th grade "B" finishes and we rush on the 8th grade "B" to get them stretched for the next game. As I am leading stretches, I turn around and low and behold, Carthage has marched out their 7th grade "A". I am talking about, our "A" teams had just unloaded the bus. So we talk to the coaches and we end up rushing our 7th grade "A" quickly onto the field.
I'm the kind of guy that has routines. I am not OCD by any stretch of the imagination, but on game days and in certain parts of life, I like to have a little structure and sameness. Call me superstitious. This totally threw me off my routine. In my head, I have a little stress but I am one of the coaches and in turn have to stay cool and calm and not let this become my excuse in the event that we lose. However, sometimes what is going on outside of me isn't what is going on inside. Inside, I am perplexed and a little ticked off that my routine has been thrown off. We had played three games to this point and everything was going really well for us. Now, I am reminded of something Joe Paterno said, "The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner." Well, for the Henderson Cubs 7A team, disaster was about to strike.
We fell behind early, and at halftime, I gave a little speech about not giving up. Now, I have been in charge of making the bands for the middle school offense for the last two seasons. I have always included a bible verse on my band. The first season I did it, I would put one at the bottom of one of the sheets. This season, we had three-sided bands, so the band was on two of the sides and on the bottom side I would but a picture with a verse. The Carthage week, this was inside the band...
In case you can't tell, that is Psalm 46:2. I had the kids repeat it after I read it, it fired them up. I told them that the game wasn't over and we still had time to take it!
We were only down a TD, so we could do it. It was not in our cards that night and we ended up losing 32-16 for our only loss of the football season, but the lesson those kids learned was worth it all.
Two weeks later, against Palestine, we were in a back and forth battle, and again went into halftime down, this time by only four points. We answered in the third with eight points and another eight in the fourth and then managed to hold them on their final drive. That is an ultimate victory folks, when kids realize when things go wrong they don't have to fold up their tents.
That same experience translated to basketball, 7A had already lost to Carthage (only their second loss of the season) and we played them again on the final night of the season with the district championship on the line. We took a eleven-point lead into the fourth quarter, and it slowly disappeared. We were in Carthage, and the crowd was packed. I think I called three timeouts in the final thirty seconds to get my kids calmed down. We escaped the gym with a two-point win and in my mind, erased their one-point win in our house. So we took a one-point advantage over them and technically won district outright. That's how I put it anyway.
All that to say, our walk with Christ should be no different than what happened to those 7th grade athletes. Now, the triumphs of athletes and sports teams are trivial when compared to what we face in life, but it is useful to utilize lessons learned in these situations.
The Book of James says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." (James 1:2-3)
We are called to be joyous in our trials. If we open our eyes to see beyond the present suffering we are going through, to see the big picture, we would be so much better off. For the most part, though, we are detail people and we see the things that are happening to us right now and then we may miss the big blessing God has waiting for us. We choose to instead sulk in our suffering. We bend to the pressure that it puts on us. We scratch, claw, and fight through it, because we can do it. We rarely lean on the person of Christ. When all he wants us to do is lean on Him. Just like those 7th graders had to lean on their coaches and each other, we have to lean on our coach, Jesus. We can also lean on other Christians, those guys are our teammates and we help each other along.
Jesus is described as the Lion of Judah. If we are His children, that makes us lions, too. Lions live in a pride. We should stay with our pride and work with each other. If you're living the Christian life alone, you're setting yourself up for a lot more heartache than you need!
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